Sorghum crop is grown under tropical and temperate latitudes for several purposes including production of health promoting food from the kernel and forage and biofuels from aboveground biomass. One of the concerns of policy-makers and sorghum growers is to cost-effectively predict biomass yields early during the cropping season to improve biomass and biofuel management. The objective of this study was to investigate if Sentinel-2 satellite images could be used to predict within-season biomass sorghum yields in the Mediterranean region.
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of International Earth Day on April 22 2020, UNDP launched a new way of helping farmers: Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration for Systemic Change: A New Approach to Strengthening Farmer Support Systems, a guidance note which encourages and guides governments to develop new partnerships, enable innovation and strengt
This report presents and reflects on the opportunities that new technological developments related to automation and precision agriculture (e.g. robotics) can offer to agriculture in developing countries. These technologies are mainly targeted to support farmers that struggle with the cost of labour when harvesting crops and to tackle the declining availability of manpower for general cropping operations.
Le présent rapport étudie les possibilités que les nouvelles avancées technologiques liées à l’automatisation et à l’agriculture de précision (la robotique, par exemple) peuvent offrir à l’agriculture dans les pays en développement. Ces technologies visent principalement à aider les agriculteurs appelés à faire face au coût de la main-d’oeuvre nécessaire pour les opérations de récolte, ainsi qu’à répondre au problème de la raréfaction de la main-d’oeuvre disponible pour l’ensemble des travaux agricoles.
The need to urgently transition food systems to net-zero, nature-positive that can nourish all people, leaving no one behind is more critical than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic has furthered deepened complex challenges we already face from hunger and nutrition, climate and nature, and societal inequity. Innovation offers a profound opportunity to achieve these transitions and help unlock challenges across food systems.
Le présent document expose les principaux domaines d’intervention qui ont été désignés comme éléments essentiels de la stratégie de la FAO destinée à renforcer les systèmes d’innovation agricole (SIA) à divers niveaux (recherche et vulgarisation, agroécologie, emplois verts, mobilisation de ressources, etc.) pour parvenir à un développement rural durable.
Innovation has a high potential for increasing productivity and farmers’ income,l and consequently reducing poverty and improving food security. However several tropic al countries lack the resources and capacities to suitably develop their agricultural innovation systems. To address this gap, the g20 established the tropical agriculture platform (tap), a multilateral dynamic facilitation mechanism, which fosters better coherence and greater impact of capacity development for agricultural innova tion systems in tropical countries.
In Asia and the Pacific, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is working with member countries to leverage breakthroughs in information and communication technologies (ICT) to fight hunger, improve nutrition and counter the effects of climate change and extreme weather events that can devastate farmers and their crops. In the Philippines, a country prone to typhoons, aerial drones are taking to the sky to map out at-risk areas of agricultural land to mitigate risk. This innovative practice is also able to quickly assess damages when a disaster strikes.
Scientific advances, technical innovations and application of digital technology have the potential to contribute to a wide-scale structural transformation of food systems. In food safety and process control, as in other areas, technical advances outpace the understanding of how to use these tools to their greatest advantage and how they should be regulated. This thematic brief for the First FAO/WHO/AU International Food Safety Conference outlines key issues - strategic direction of science and innovation in food systems.
Les progrès scientifiques, les innovations techniques et l'application des technologies numériques peuvent contribuer à une transformation structurelle à grande échelle des systèmes alimentaires. Dans le domaine de la sécurité sanitaire des aliments et du contrôle des processus, comme dans d'autres domaines, le rythme du progrès technique est si rapide qu'il est difficile de savoir comment exploiter au maximum les outils qui en découlent et les réglementer.